Balancing Development: Über OPMs

[Morwys]

At the moment, some minors or OPMs can end up with immense ammounts of development and create strange scenarios. This seems WAD, as 'playing tall' seems to be all about exactly that kind of gameplay, but it sure is bizarre to see a 3 province Wallachia with 100 development on each province - more development then London, Paris and many other big capitals. The added ducat cost could slow down those minor a bit while still making playing tall a viable alternative - you can survive and even thrive as Armenia, but not start an early industrialization.

Based on this discussion on the regular forum.

 

[Nuklearius]

#

 

[Morwys]

I don't know about decreasing development levels. It would benefit nations that don't go to war even more.

And I also think that MP should have some role in it, mainly because to most nations - and specially trading minors - ducats eventually become trivial after some point. Without MP costs, nations like the Hansa or Portugal are going to do exactly what Wallachia did, only much worse.

 

[Nuklearius]

I

 

[Frederick III]

Tying development to money instead of to monarch points defeats the purpose of development. The whole point was to provide an alternative to going wide. If you tie development to money - which is principally gained by having a larger and larger empire - then you're turning it into a mechanism that benefits a wide game and eliminating the incentive to go tall.

 

[Nuklearius]

Tying

 

[EvilFuzzyDoom]

Adding a money cost would make it almost the same as the old buildings.

A build-timer would be a much better idea.

 

[lolada]

Is this in 1.13 beta patch or without beta?

 

[Linvega]

A system I would propose would be that:
Development should be completely tied to ducats (monarch points honestly don't make much sense). The provinces start out with a base development level (the ones that they have at the start of the game). The development can be improved by investing ducats (lots of them). The cost becomes, of course, higher the more you develop your province (also related to what tech-group you have). In addition to this there should be a decay added, that ticks down development back to the base level the provinces had in the beginning. After a certain time (50 years or so after the development) the development that has been improved and stayed at the same level the whole time, should become the new base development for the province with every new development costs being based on this. Furthermore the temporary development levels that you added should be destroyed as soon as the province gets sieged and looted in wars or annexed by a foreign nation without cores there.
Why this changes? Because now little wallachia cannot exponentially increase their development levels just because they have a good ruler. They still can improve their development but once they are conquered, they loose most of it. It would also fix the ridiculous coring cost for newly annexed territorys.
Any thoughts on this?

Actually, since MP gain doesn't scale with development, Wallachia isn't increasing exponentially, it's increasing linearly.
On the other hand, money gain DOES scale with development, so you are actually enabling exponential growth through tying it to money gain.
Though that's not that important, but the notion of "base development" seems really, really weird to me, too. The dev level of 1444 is just that: The development it had at this arbitrary time.
And the system seems unnecessarily complicated.

A short overview of what tying it to certain things accomplishes:

MP cost offers a strong limit since it's increasing with a relatively fixed, linear rate, so as long as the dev level depends on it, it can at most rise linearly, too. It also means that small nations will be able to develop their whole land, while big nations can only develop a part of their land.
ducat cost keeps poor nations from getting unreasonable dev levels.
cooldown keeps rich OPMs from getting even more unreasonable dev levels.
As I see it, all three are necessary for a decent implementation.

 

[Morwys]

Tying development to money instead of to monarch points defeats the purpose of development. The whole point was to provide an alternative to going wide. If you tie development to money - which is principally gained by having a larger and larger empire - then you're turning it into a mechanism that benefits a wide game and eliminating the incentive to go tall.

I agree entirely, this is why I don't think it's a good idea to remove the MP cost.

Adding a money cost would make it almost the same as the old buildings.

Maybe. But what else could be done about really high development by OPMs? Or you don't see this as a problem?

Is this in 1.13 beta patch or without beta?

1.13 beta.

Actually, since MP gain doesn't scale with development, Wallachia isn't increasing exponentially, it's increasing linearly.
On the other hand, money gain DOES scale with development, so you are actually enabling exponential growth through tying it to money gain.

But if the MP cost still exists, this is not the case, right?

A short overview of what tying it to certain things accomplishes:

MP cost offers a strong limit since it's increasing with a relatively fixed, linear rate, so as long as the dev level depends on it, it can at most rise linearly, too. It also means that small nations will be able to develop their whole land, while big nations can only develop a part of their land.
ducat cost keeps poor nations from getting unreasonable dev levels.
cooldown keeps rich OPMs from getting even more unreasonable dev levels.
As I see it, all three are necessary for a decent implementation.

Just so I can understand, the CD is meant to slow down development, to make so that really rich nations that are not limited by ducats can also be prevented from those unreasonable dev levels. Is this correct?

 

[t6.28]

You could maybe have it tied to the tech level: You could allow only developing up to a certain value based on your current tech (e.g. you could develop to a max of 20 base tax at admin tech 3, to 35 at admin 13, to 50 at admin 23, ... (same goes for production and diplo tech, as well as manpower and mil tech)) and make developing past that point insanely expensive. That would force small countries to first level up their technology before they can continue developing.

 

[Morwys]

You could maybe have it tied to the tech level: You could allow only developing up to a certain value based on your current tech (e.g. you could develop to a max of 20 base tax at admin tech 3, to 35 at admin 13, to 50 at admin 23, ... (same goes for production and diplo tech, as well as manpower and mil tech)) and make developing past that point insanely expensive. That would force small countries to first level up their technology before they can continue developing.

I like this idea, but isn't the AI prioritizing tech ATM? If so, then this is kind of implemented, instead of a hard limit there's a really soft one.

 

[CharlesTheBald]

This may not be 100% well thought out but I've got an idea of making a cap per province on development that would be dynamic. This is how it would work:

1. Each province has a development potential that represents population limits etc.
2. This is based mainly on current development but also other factors.
3. This cap would be roughly current development +25-50% (decreasing somewhat with high development)
4. So a 5 development province would have a potential of maybe 10.
5. The potential grows slowly with time, depending on how full it is. A province developed to 100% potential would maybe recieve +1 extra potential every 10 years, while a province at 50% of its potential will have its potential increased maybe once every 50 years. So there's clearly an incentive to develop as much as possible.
6. Some things would increase/decrease development potential, including:

• Capitals in a country with many provinces will have a bonus to potential. An "imperial" capital will receive a sick bonus, while an OPM will receive no capital bonus. This way, London, Paris etc could grow in
• Main trading ports increase potential somewhat
• Some province modifiers will increase potential, most importantly center of trade modifiers (more below)
• Some valuable goods that historically spawned important cities, like textiles and salt will give bigger potential
• The overall value of the trade node will have a great impact on development potential, a trade node that is completely wothless will decrease potential and a very valuable one will increase potential for its provinces
• A neighbouring province with high development will decrease potential of its neighboring provinces, making it hard to create 5 versions of Paris next to eachother.

Together with this system, I would make center of trade modifiers dynamic and much more powerful. If you get enough trade power in a node, and have a province that is very developed and has high trade value, you can get a center of trade modifier for that province.
A node would have a maximum number of trade centers active at once, let's say one modifier per every 10 ducats of value in the node with 1 center being a minimum in every node. This mean that you basically could "steal" the modifiers in a node for your provinces. This way, building tall and not just conquering, would be the proper way to play the trade game.

When potential decreases to number lower than the actual development, like when you change capitals for example, other provinces with higher potential, most often your new capital, will step by step "eat" the development of the old province. If those are capped, you feed your neighbouring countries instead. I think this could be handlad by events, like the serfs moving to the city event.
That sounds a bit silly, I know, but we would need a system of stagnation and declining provinces to make this system work and not be expoitable.​

 

[Linvega]

But if the MP cost still exists, this is not the case, right?



Just so I can understand, the CD is meant to slow down development, to make so that really rich nations that are not limited by ducats can also be prevented from those unreasonable dev levels. Is this correct?

Yes & yes.

 

[EvilFuzzyDoom]

Maybe. But what else could be done about really high development by OPMs? Or you don't see this as a problem?

Honestly I don't really see it as a problem. After a certain point it hits 100+ MP per development dot, which IMO is an absolutely fine price to pay. I've found that Wide is still much more powerful than Tall, anyway.

 

[Morwys]

Honestly I don't really see it as a problem. After a certain point it hits 100+ MP per development dot, which IMO is an absolutely fine price to pay. I've found that Wide is still much more powerful than Tall, anyway.

I guess it's something that can be overlooked - after all, it is how playing tall should work. What I really don't get however, or that I'm really doubtful about, is that coring alone would make up for the difference in development. I mean, a nation like England, for example, that is lucky and usually has a lot of MP should not be so far behind in development. I don't understand how such difference can occur.

 

[funguide]

A better system would be have those advisers be tied up doing this stuff. They would generate the monarch points as they already do but also be dispatched to the province, to develop its base tax or manpower depending on the type of adviser. High level adviser takes less time than low level adviser, or something. Also the province would cost ducats to develop. This will stop the mass development of four province nations or a free city like in my game which was like 150 development .

Also this could open up new options and bonuses for advisers and revamping innovative ideas group to go more towards advisers and development.

 

[EvilFuzzyDoom]

I guess it's something that can be overlooked - after all, it is how playing tall should work. What I really don't get however, or that I'm really doubtful about, is that coring alone would make up for the difference in development. I mean, a nation like England, for example, that is lucky and usually has a lot of MP should not be so far behind in development. I don't understand how such difference can occur.

Theoretically, Wide nations are spending ADM on coring and reducing their inflation (gotta pay for those wars); DIP on integrating vassals and culture-converting; MIL on crushing rebels.

There was a Magistrate advisor in EU3. It was rubbish.